Posts tagged “Piers Morgan”

One of the most polarizing figures in southeastern Wisconsin is Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke. In a sense, Clarke is kind of a duck out of water—a law-and-order conservative who was elected to office as a Democrat in a liberal county, even though he often aligns himself with Republican office holders.

One would think, though, that the sheriff’s Dirty Harry persona would resonate well with members of his department’s rank-and-file and other county sheriffs, especially his unrelenting, mano-a-mano efforts to thwart the gun-grabbers. Instead, Clarke’s take-the-bull-by-the horns management style has alienated those who should be his biggest supporters, namely the deputies whose jobs he has fought obstinately to spare from the chopping block.

Having worked with David Clarke in the Milwaukee Police Department’s homicide unit, I am well aware of his passion for victims’ rights and his respect for the values enumerated in the Bill of Rights. Philosophically, when it comes to the role of law enforcement and public safety, there’s probably not a dime’s worth of difference between Sheriff Clarke and I. That being said our styles of management are the antithesis of each other’s.

Whereas, Clarke—an official elected by the public—embodies a top-down approach to organizational leadership, I generally prefer to delegate the administration of most tasks to qualified managers and/or subordinates. After all, the sheriff, the chief-of-police, captains, and, to a lesser extent, shift commanders, are department heads or managers who just so happen to carry guns. Their primary focus should consist of fostering relationships with those controlling their department’s budgets, setting the agency’s agenda, getting buy-in from those under their command, maintaining discipline within the ranks, and communicating effectively with the public.

No doubt, on occasion, high-ranking law enforcement administrators will have their differences with judges, the district attorney’s office, members of the media, and the mayor and/or the county executive. Typically, though, smoothing out these differences behind the scenes enables an elected department head or a de facto political appointee, such a police chief, to further advance their agency’s agenda and improve public safety.

Whether it is out of frustration or an unwillingness to capitulate core values, Sheriff Clarke has aired a lot of dirty laundry in public—calling out Chief Judge Jeffrey Kremers, claiming that Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele suffers from “penis envy,” and apologizing in a letter to U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham for Chief Flynn’s antiquated and nonsensical testimony in support of an semi-automatic rifle ban.

Nonetheless, when given an opportunity, Clarke is a very effective communicator. Even Piers Morgan made note of the sheriff’s “Hollywood voice.”

Yesterday, I had an opportunity to listen to Sheriff Clarke as he filled-in for Milwaukee talk-radio host Mark Belling during the show’s Five- O’clock hour on WISN radio. If and when Clarke decides to retire his gun-and-badge, he most definitely has a future as a talk-radio host (to catch a short portion of the sheriff’s performance, click the link to the following Podcast):

No doubt, Clarke came armed with a lot more than the emotional rhetoric Chief Flynn regurgitated during an appearance before a U.S. Senate sub-committee. In Milwaukee County, the sheriff noted, over a 12-year period only 44 percent of the cases brought to the DA’s office involving the straw purchases of guns for felons where charged, which resulted in offenders serving an average of just seven months for a crime that carries a maximum penalty of ten-years in prison.

Personally, as far as WISN radio hosts are concerned, I would prefer to hear more of Sheriff Clarke and less from two of the other infrequently used fill-ins, whose attached-at-the-hip relationship to the special interest, Patriot Act-wing of Republican Party is rather dull and predictable. If Clarke can broaden his repertoire to include other issues, his stock as a talk-radio host will rise exponentially.

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Steve Spingola is an author and retired Milwaukee Police Department homicide detective. His latest book, Best of the Spingola Files, Vol. II: Here’s Looking at You, is available at Amazon.com.

Since the horrific events at Sandy Hook Elementary School, certain politicians, police chiefs, and talking heads have, like chameleons after an election, began to show their true colors on where they stand on the Second Amendment rights of Americans.

The debate over self-defense, government tyranny, and individual liberty, has spotlighted two of New York’s prominent big government, nanny-state politicians, namely Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Michael “Big Brother” Bloomberg.

Bloomberg, whose administration has transformed the Big Apple into a virtual police state, is clamoring for gun control (really gun confiscation), soda rationing, and, believe it or not, restrictions on pain medications for patients in “the city hospitals we control.”

A wealthy blowhard with armed security, Bloomberg obviously believes that the government—as opposed to those of us who get up every morning, go to work, pay our bills, and live our lives the way we sit fit—knows best.

On Tuesday, a federal judge ruled that that Bloomberg’s police department’s policy of simply stopping and frisking minorities outside of private residential buildings was unconstitutional.

“While it may be difficult to say where, precisely, to draw the line between constitutional and unconstitutional police encounters, such a line exists,” wrote federal judge Shira A. Scheindlin, “and the N.Y.P.D. has systematically crossed it when making trespass stops outside TAP buildings in the Bronx.”

Ask any instructor of criminal law: the legal standard to conduct a stop-and-frisk is a reasonable and articulable suspicion that a person is armed. The last time I checked, New York City had not succeeded from the union, which means the Fourth Amendment is still applicable in Bloomberg’s fiefdom.

Bloomberg has also worked in partnership with the private sector to create a surveillance state that makes the dreadful tale of Orwell’s 1984 pale in comparison. In August, the mayor announced that the NYPD and Microsoft had partnered to create the “Domain Awareness System”—a network that will fuse data from facial recognition software, public and private surveillance cameras, automated license plate readers, radiation detectors, and chemical sensors, to create stored dossiers on individuals absent a reasonable suspicion of wrong doing.

“If a person has had radiation treatment for cancer and walks by a stationary censor or a copper with a detector,” one person in the know recently told me, “the NYPD will poke its nose into that person’s private life and their name will end up a database”—HIPAA be damned.

Not to be out done on the crackdown on individual liberty is New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

“I don’t think a legitimate huntsman is going to say I need an assault weapon to go hunting,” Cuomo told Fred Dicker of radio 1300 AM in Albany.

And, if the governor were to aptly apply the actual definition of an “assault weapon,” he would be correct, as an “assault rifle” is one that fires more than one round with a single pull of the trigger—currently a felony under federal law unless the person in possession of such a weapon is licensed, a certified law enforcement officer, or engaged in authorized military exercises.

Moreover, Gov. Cuomo, who fancies himself as a 2016 contender for president, is advocating the seizure of firearms from law-abiding citizens.

“Confiscation could be an option,” Cuomo told Albany radio station WGDJ. “Mandatory sale to the state could be an option. Permitting could be an option — keep your gun, but permit it.”

In the America that is New York State, individuals will apparently soon need a permit to exercise their Constituional rights–a sad state of affairs in a state that is slowly morphing into an Orwellian abyss.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“I fear the possibility of a tyranny rising in the country in the next 50 to 100 years. Let me tell you something, Piers. The fact that my grandparents and great-grandparents in Europe didn’t fear that is why they’re now ashes in Europe. This kind of leftist revisionist history where there’s no fear of democracy going userpatious or tyrannical, is just that. It’s fictitious.”

BEN SHAPIRO—during a heated exchange with CNN’s Piers Morgan that the Second Amendment is a check on government tyranny.

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Steve Spingola is an author and retired Milwaukee Police Department homicide detective. His latest book, Best of the Spingola Files, Vol. II: Here’s Looking at You, is available at Amazon.com.